Human Rights Defender Quotes

History is a people's memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.

I'm not a Republican, nor a Democrat, nor an American, and got sense enough to know it.

Brothers and sisters, friends and enemies: I just can't believe everyone in here is a friend, and I don't want to leave anybody out.

A revolution is bloody. Revolution is hostile. Revolution knows no compromise. Revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way. And you, sitting around here like a knot on the wall, saying, “I’m going to love these folks no matter how much they hate me.” No, you need a revolution. Whoever heard of a revolution where they lock arms, as Reverend Cleage was pointing out beautifully, singing “We Shall Overcome”? Just tell me. You don’t do that in a revolution. You don’t do any singing; you’re too busy swinging.

I learned early that crying out in protest could accomplish things. My older brothers and sister had started to school when, sometimes, they would come in and ask for a buttered biscuit or something and my mother, impatiently, would tell them no. But I would cry out and make a fuss until I got what I wanted. I remember well how my mother asked me why I couldn't be a nice boy like Wilfred; but I would think to myself that Wilfred, for being so nice and quiet, often stayed hungry. So early in life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.

... the young people are the ones who most quickly identify with the struggle and the necessity to eliminate the evil conditions that exist.

America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, even eaten with people who in America would have been considered 'white,' but the 'white' attitude had been removed from their minds by the religion of Islam.

I'm with an old family" was the euphemism used to dignify the professions of white folks' cooks and maids who talked so affectedly among their own kind in Roxbury [Massachusetts] that you couldn't even understand them.

I think that the best thing that a person can be is sincere.

Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research. And when you see that you've got problems, all you have to do is examine the historic method used all over the world by others who have problems similar to yours. And once you see how they got theirs straight, then you know how you can get yours straight.

You spend so much time barking up the civil-rights tree, you don't even know there's a human-rights tree on the same floor.

When the Muslims deliver the indictment of the American system, it is not the white man per se that is being doomed.

The Negro fought and bled and died in every war the white man waged, and he still won't give you justice. You nursed his baby and cleaned behind his wife, and he still won't give you freedom; you turned the other cheek while he lynched you and raped your women, but he still won't give you equality.

My black brothers and sisters - of all religious beliefs, or of no religious beliefs - we all have in common the greatest binding tie we could have. We are all black people!

Don't you run around here trying to make friends with somebody who's depriving you of your rights. They're not your friends, no, they're your enemies. Treat them like that.

They tell us we are all citizens, that we were born in this country. Well, a cat can have kittens in the oven, but that doesn't make them biscuits!

The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.

If the Emancipation Proclamation was authentic, you wouldn't have a race problem.

Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already an American. And as long as you and I have been over here, we aren't Americans yet.

Times change so quickly that if you and I don't keep up with the times, we'll find ourselves with an umbrella in our hand, over our head, when the sun is out. Or we'll find ourselves standing in the rain, with the umbrella inside the door.

Never allow your enemies to educate your children.

My family was so poor we were close to eating the holes inside of doughnuts.

If this government can send 20 billion dollars to Latin America to some peasants who have never fought for this country or worked for this country or have - or - and is sending hundreds of millions of dollars to Africa and Asia to try and buy friendship of people who will never be friendly toward them, then they should be even more quick to spend some - whatever amount of money is necessary to get inside of their house straight, before it's too late.

Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression, because power, real power, comes from our conviction which produces action, uncompromising action.

Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and thereby increase self-respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.

Policies change, and programs change, according to time.But objective never changes. You might change your method of achieving the objective, but the objective never changes. Our objective is complete freedom, complete justice, complete equality, by any means necessary

Whereas the only real solution to the race problem in this country is a solution that involves individual self improvement and collective self improvement in, whereas our own, wherein our own people are concerned.

It has taken us that long to get the deaf, dumb, and blind black men in the wilderness of North America to wake up and understand who they are.

Soon now, as the Negro awakens a little more and sees the vise that he's in, sees the bag that he's in, sees the real game that he's in, then the Negro's going to develop a new tactic.

Anything I do today, I regard as urgent.

By any means necessary.

You get your freedom by letting your enemy know that you'll do anything to get it. Then you'll get it. It's the only way you'll get it.

You Negroes are not willing to admit it yet, but integration will not work. Why, it is against the white man's nature to integrate you into his house.

White America is in the minority.

One of the tricks of the west is to use or create images, they create images of a person who doesn't go along with their views and then they make certain that this image is distasteful, and then anything that that person has to say from thereon, from thereon in, is rejected.

Those who would hunt a man need to remember that a jungle also contains those who hunt the hunters.

We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity.

Imagine that -- a country that's supposed to be a democracy, supposed to be for freedom and all of that kind of stuff when they want to draft you and put you in the army and send you to Saigon to fight for them -- and then you've got to turn around and all night long discuss how you're going to just get a right to register and vote without being murdered. Why, that's the most hypocritical government since the world began!

It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a radical conflict of black against white or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter.

We assert that in those areas where the government is either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property of our people, that our peopie are within our rights to protect themselves by whatever means necessary.

Our success in America will involve two circles: Black Nationalism and Islam–it will take BN [Black Nationalism] to make our people conscious of doing for self & then Islam will provide the spiritual guidance. BN [Black Nationalism] will link us to Africa and Islam will link us spiritually to Africa, Arabia & Asia.

When 'I' replaced with 'We', even the illness becomes wellness.

All of us were mischievous at some time or another, I more so than any of the rest. [My brother] Philbert and I kept a battle going. ... Even in our fighting, there was a feeling of brotherly union.

An English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, ‘What’s your alma mater?’ I told him, ‘Books.

There is no more apartheid in South Africa than in the United States.

Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle.

Of all our studies, it is history that is best qualified to reward our research.

[JF] Kennedy was a deceitful man. He was a cold-blooded politician whose purpose was to get elected.

The other slaves in the field never let that house slave knew - know what they were really thinking. If the house slave said, well one of these days all of us will live in the plantation, they said, uh huh. They went along with him. But if you came up to them and said, let's go, they would be gone just like that.And in, in America you have the same situation.You have the vast masses who are still slaves.

Any group, any group that can't work with all other groups, if they are genuinely interested in solving the problems of the Negro collectively why, I don't think that that group is really sincerely motivated toward reaching a solution.

You can cuss out colonialism, imperialism, and all other kinds of ism, but it's hard for you to cuss that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, your soul goes.

I saw all races, all colors, blue eyed blonds to black skinned Africans in true brotherhood! In unity! Living as one! Worshiping as one! No segregationists, no liberals; they would not have known how to interpret the meaning of those words

I think it's possible for me to approach the whole problem with a broader scope.When you look at something through an, an organizational eye, whether it's a, a religious organization, political organization, or a civic organization, if you look at it only through the eye of that organization, you see what the organization wants you to see. But you lose your ability to be objective.

Integration is the method toward obtaining that goal. And what he Negro leader has done is gotten himself wrapped up in the method and has forgotten what the goal is.

As bad as I was, as much trouble and worry as I caused my mother, I loved her.

Ralph Bunche, who is an internationally recognized and respected diplomat, can't stay in a hotel in Georgia, which means that no matter what the accomplishment, the intellectual, the academic, or professional level of a negro is, collectively he stands condemned.

The black people of America have been victims of violence at the hands of the white men for four hundred years, and following the ignorant Negro preachers, we have thought that it was godlike to turn the other cheek to the brute that was brutalizing us.

A Negro just can't be whipped by somebody white and return with his head up in the neighborhood, especially in those days, when sports and, to a lesser extent show business, were the only fields open to Negroes, and when the ring was the only place a Negro could whip a white man and not be lynched.

That's not a chip on my shoulder, that's your foot on my neck.

Stumbling is not falling.